The thing was over at last. It was a week? Two weeks? Three weeks? Groff had kept no track of the time. Exhausted with exulting he lay back in his chair with his instruments around him. How wonderful it had been. The ultimate conquest. The power of Groff and Groff alone. So many times it had made him think of those other conquerors--those little men of history who had been thrilled by their trips of triumph into some petty land their armies had devastated. That little man in his aircar, gazing in triumph, swelling himself with his pride as he gazed at the death and destruction he had brought to just one petty nation in three weeks.... Groff's triumph was over now. He had seen much of it, with his telescopes ranging the city, and on his television mirrors before the television went blank. It had been queer, how people, stricken so that they knew they had only a few days to live, had rushed around bringing their families together. Queer that then they had not really seemed afraid. Queer how the churches had been crowded, with doomed people who clung together and had a strange look on their faces as though they were not afraid to die.... Then it was over. From the immense height and safety of his little tower Groff sat surveying his conquered world. The man who had everything. The ultimate of personal power. And what would he do with it now? Queer thought! It was so queer, so whimsical a thought that he chuckled, and then was laughing at it--laughing for so long that it left him breathless. There was nobody here to hate. That was another queer thought. Was it days, or weeks or years, that now he sat alone in his little tower, surveying his empty world? There was nothing to do but gloat with pride at the greatness of himself; and to laugh at the whimsicality of his hungry need to be angry at his enemies who now did not exist. He had tired of that. Then there were times when he thought it would be satisfying if he killed himself, like the man who had written the book and who could not live when he realized that the time had come when no one feared him. But Groff found that he had not the courage to do that. It tired him to laugh so much, so that often now he sat, just anguished with emptiness. It was queer how that vision of the young couple going down his staircase seemed always here to haunt and to puzzle him. What had been about them that was so gigantic? The thought enraged him, because he knew now that it was something he might have wanted--something he had failed to get. End of Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Killed the Earth, by Ray King